Thursday, June 30, 2016

Journalist
circles in particular like to describe the press as a "great power" in the state. As a matter of fact, its importance really is immense.
It cannot be overestimated, for the press really continues education
in adulthood.

Its
readers, by and large, can be divided into three groups: First,
into those who believe everything they read; second,
into those who have ceased to believe anything; third,
into the minds which critically examine what they read, and judge
accordingly.

Numerically,
the first group is by far the largest. It consists of the great mass
of the people and consequently represents the simplest-minded part of
the nation. It cannot be listed in terms of professions, but at most
in general degrees of intelligence. To it belong all those who have
neither been born nor trained to think independently, and who partly
from incapacity and partly from incompetence believe everything that
is set before them in black and white. To them also belongs the type
of lazybones who could perfectly well think, but from sheer mental
laziness seizes gratefully on everything that someone else has
thought, with the modest assumption that the someone else has exerted
himself considerably. Now, with all these types, who constitute the
great masses, the influence of the press will be enormous. They are
not able or willing themselves to examine what is set before them,
and as a result their whole attitude toward all the problems of the
day can be reduced almost exclusively to the outside influence of
others. This can be advantageous when their enlightenment is
provided by a serious and truth-loving party, but it is catastrophic
when scoundrels and liars provide it.

The second
group is much smaller in number. It is partly composed of elements
which previously belonged to the first group, but after long and
bitter disappointments shifted to the opposite and no longer believe
anything that comes before their eyes in print. They hate every
newspaper; either they don't read it at all, or without exception fly
into a rage over the contents, since in their opinion they consist
only of lies and falsehoods. These people are very hard to handle,
since they are suspicious even in the face of truth. Consequently,
they are lost for all positive, political work.

The third
group, finally, is by far the smallest; it consists of the minds with
real mental subtlety, whom natural gifts and education have taught to
think independently, who try to form their own judgment on all
things, and who subject everything they read to a thorough
examination and further development of their own. They will not look
at a newspaper without always collaborating in their minds, and the
writer has no easy time of it. Journalists love such readers with
the greatest reserve.

For the
members of this third group, it must be admitted, the nonsense that
newspaper scribblers can put down is not very dangerous or even very
important. Most of them in the course of their lives have learned to
regard every journalist as a rascal on principle, who tells the truth
only once in a blue moon. Unfortunately, however, the importance of
these splendid people lies only in their intelligence and not in
their number - a misfortune at a time when wisdom is nothing and the
majority is everything! Today, when the ballot of the masses
decides, the chief weight lies with the most numerous group, and this
is the first: the mob of the simple or credulous.

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

The problem is capitalist globalization, not "hate." Even with a fairly low growth rate, say two to three percent, a global population rapidly headed for 10 or 12 billion can't help but occasion massive social and cultural dislocation via "immigration," whether legal or illegal. To interpret all complaints about the loss of local control entailed in being swamped by newcomers and governed by phony internationalists as a form of "racism" makes it impossible for political dialogue to occur. "Hate groups," "hate crimes," and "hate speech" are all very vaguely defined buzz words that contribute heavily to the "divide and conquer" strategy sensible people rightly dislike.

Monday, June 27, 2016

The
law will allow first responders to, without fear of liability, provide oxygen, perform mouth-to-snout
resuscitation, try to stem bleeding, bandage and even administer the
overdose antidote naloxone to dogs or cats that have ingested opiates.

Liability
has been a concern because owners of pets have sued first responders who
treated animals that ended up dying.

Friday, June 24, 2016

Brexit, a loss for not only British but also European and
global capital, is ultimately a victory for humanity even though the mentally
beleaguered brigades of all-is-always-lost are made to see it as a triumph of
the racist right. Those who insure the growing strength of a reactionary right are
the barely existent left, too often acting as echo chamber for establishment
politics even while posing criticism which amounts to hiring a woman captain, a
multicultural crew and installing gender fluid toilets for the Titanic. We
should understand that the movement in England, a truly democratic expression
in which more than 70% of the electorate voted, has also reared its head in the
USA through the Trump and Sanders campaigns. While neither Republicrat says a
word in criticism of capital they are both hopeful signs of its future
democratically arranged demise, even as motivated-by-the right voices in Europe
join a smaller but more economically conscious left in a unity many of them
remain unconscious of but will hopefully soon act upon.

The ravages suffered by increasing populations who see
wealth growing for tiny minorities while life becomes more difficult for them
are causing breakdowns and uprisings that panic established power and its often
innocent but sometimes conscious professional classes. The opinion shapers and
consciousness creators work overtime to depict any reactions against a failing
system as the work of neo-nazis on the one hand or cultural-Marxists on the
other, with both labels vastly over stated while understating the profound
problems facing humanity which are sometimes causing seemingly irrational
responses from people who have an economic floor collapsing beneath their feet
while a political roof crashes down on their heads.

While capital has advertised its global aspects in glowing terms
and made a new middle class in nations previously lacking one, it has added
greatly to poverty and loss that must necessarily be absorbed in order for
others to profit. The system of minority private gain which supposedly trickles
down to insure a better life for the majority was always a lie, understood by
many even back in the 19th century. But the speed at which electronic
change has joined with the inherent greed of blind individualism, which is
contradictorily still seen by innocents as ways to improve life for everyone,
has increased the assault on nature by commodity capital’s marketing process to
the point of creating terminal danger to the most important part of that nature;
humanity itself.

While savage austerity policies have been used to slash
public spending to benefit private profiteers in Greece, France and England,
they have also run rampant in the rest of the world and the USA.This global rule,
which is making more billionaires, has also created millions more paupers and
lowered what was once a fairly secure middle class to one that just barely gets
by. Meanwhile, the upper percentile of professional servants to capital,
especially those operating in the mind managing and systems strengthening
fields of education and media, have shared in the gains, though at a much lower
level of course, but fallen prey to support by inactivity except to opt for
what are forms of affirmative action that make life better only for some
selected groups while continuing to make it much worse for most others, even in
the supposedly targeted demographic-ethnic-racial-identity subdivisions divide
and conquer politics uses to assure the status remains quo. Thus, for one
obvious example, an American Black Bourgeoisie increases in some numbers thanks
to more college educated people, while prisons bulge with a much larger number
of blacks who are of the economic class – the overwhelming majority! – who
remain un-“affirmed”. What was originally criticized as a system to “send one
to Yale and send ten to jail” has turned out to be even worse than that.

Whether formerly middle class people reduced to indebted
workers trying to pay off loans or formerly working class people reduced to
lower incomes, vanishing pensions and a tax burden to carry the social costs of
benefits which accrue to fewer and fewer, anger and frustration are shared with
few offers of solution from a barely existing left and far more from a populist
right. Mislabeling all this simplistically as racism, especially in a society
born of racist oppression in which all current residents, whether members of ethnically
hyphenated groups, gay, straight, legal, “undocumented” or of any skin tone, live
in and on land stolen from original inhabitants, is the plan and program of the
divide and conquer rulers. Continuing to play into it will only make the worst
outcomes a matter of fact rather than fantasy.

The fact that 400 billionaires in America have more combined
wealth than 60% of the nation cannot be reduced to a problem of one or another
identity group other than rich people having too much wealth and power. The
fact that only 20 of those at the top command more wealth than 50% of the
people- that’s more than
150,000,000 – cannot be dealt with simply by hiring more professionals to serve
them and seeing to it that they are a multi-cultural politically correct group.
With such staggering economically tyrannical realities to deal with, reducing
matters to whether one uses proper speech on what are often knee jerk issues of
as much significance as ball scores is what our rulers want and all too often
get. And yes we can all get thrilled or excited about rooting for the homies
but when it’s time to come up with the rent or mortgage the landlord or bank
will not accept “yay team” in lieu of payment.

Opposing immigration may sometimes involve racism, but so can
supporting it. Those who finance national capital’s cheap labor employment
agency which opens its doors wide for some immigrants while slamming it shut
for many americans – often “people of color” – are not heaven’s gift to a
higher state of being but may simply be decent folks economically uninformed.

Of course, if they are among the groups that directly profit
from that cheap labor, whether from agribusiness, the mills, foundries, or
homes that get cleaned, gardened and child cared by that cheap labor,
immigration is great. But if they are denied the jobs, both entry level and beyond,
that go to a newer, cheaper labor force, or have to pay the taxes to support
the social costs of that immigration there is a very different view. Rather
than reducing a political economic problem to a simplistic good vs. evil which conveniently
forgets or excludes the evil of economic and war policies throwing people out of
their home lands which is a responsibility we all share, we need to act on that
responsibility as a majority and stop blaming it on supposedly politically
incorrect minorities.

Instead of
enabling some to feel good about themselves for being accepting of situations
which either profit them directly or cost them nothing at all while others who
show the loss protest and are treated as evil, we need to understand the economic
roots which are costing all of us, to different degrees, and understand that
even if it looks profitable to some for the moment, it can turn out disastrous
in the next. Not only in a fast changing natural environment crisis called
climate change, but in a more immediately dangerous one called terrorism, also
a result of political economic policies which go unchanged while people allow themselves
to be toyed with and shaped into fear and even hate for other people like them and
often worse off, while remaining helpless, or unmindful, or supportive of the
tiny group in ownership and operation of our political economic reality.

The British
people took a step in the direction of saying “enough”. We need to go much further
but we can only do so by ending the divisions that make democracy impossible,
and that means ending this destructive fear mongering play upon emotions that
may as well see every reaction to a reality that needs radical change as an
assault on those poor 400 billionaires, and their global “identity group”.

Thursday, June 16, 2016

The latest mass tragedy has seen the usual shock, sadness
and fear expressed by ordinary people, and the usual professional grieving,
intellectual hypocrisy and moral disability by most of what passes for American
leadership. While various political, professional and identity group spokespeople
claim the tragedy as suffered by all but especially their own communities and
seek both real and imagined sources of the horror unleashed at Orlando, the
so-called war on terror that has murdered millions elsewhere and has repeatedly
come home to America in brutal fashion still seems useful only in mostly
ignorant rhetoric.

While the new antichrist for liberals, Trump, is charged with
bigotry in calling for a ban on immigration of Muslims, he and his even
narrower minded nationals of what some Islamic fundamentalists call the
“satanic” forces of the USA go on killing Muslims on their native soil before
they can ever think about escaping. Expressing compassion for immigrants who
would not have to seek refuge if we weren’t destroying their homelands is like
an exceptionally violent rapist offering sympathetic counsel to the victim of
his brutality. Yet this mental disorder that would shame the label of
schizophrenia is honorably practiced by hate labelers who commit massive hate
crimes across the globe while claiming civilized, democratic and humanitarian
labels for themselves.

And attributing
the Orlando murderer’s action to gay hatred, Latino hatred, woman hatred,
violence worship, gun loving or overuse of anti-social media may all be at
least partly true, but claiming that birth is a definite path to death is even
more true but just as reductionist.

Whether this man was cruel to his wife, had a violent nature,
hated gays or was himself gay might have played a role in his terrible deed had it occured in some
social vacuum, but the material reality of this crime goes far beyond his
possibly tortured psyche and ability to procure weapons in the american
marketplace of madness and is only a small part of the story.

The much larger part is this:

American nationally sanctioned slaughter of millions of Muslim
people in mass terrorist attacks that destroy nations in the Middle East and
create hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the chaos is the root cause of
why an occasional Muslim or small group of Muslims engage in mass slaughter of
Americans in a terror attack in the USA. Their horrible retaliation does not
come out of a social vacuum even if some wish to place it entirely on the backs
of deranged individuals or minority identity groups taking vengeance on other
minority identity groups.

Of course more than one billion Islamic people are not
responsible for the actions taken by a relative handful driven to fanaticism,
but Americans who profess superiority by virtue of being an exceptional nation
of freedom loving people – in the words of all their leaders – but who act more
like a master race of self chosen global rulers bear more responsibility for
what is done in their name. And in truth far more given that relatively few
rise in outcry after every slaughter performed by the USA or one of its
client-lap dog regimes. For instance, no political speeches about the sanctity
of life or mournful American candle-lit processions took place when more than
60 Afghan family members and friends at a wedding party were blown to bits by a
U.S. drone several years ago, and that is only one loss of innocent life
unacknowledged by mostly decent citizens only guilty of ignorance.

But if we advertise ourselves as a democratic people, all of
us are ultimately responsible and in danger of paying a price for what only
some of us really do. We can’t have it both ways.

The real message of the Orlando slaughter is not to sink
even lower in a political debate already emanating from and in keeping with an
increasingly popular subject of identitary reductionists in power and out; the
toilet. Too many forget that Chelsea Manning is not deprived of lavatory freedom
but has been thrown into a cell for thirty-five years because she, actually he
at the time of the crime, informed fellow citizens as to just what a murderous
crime was being perpetrated under this hate-label “war on terror”. In fact,
Bradley became Chelsea while incarcerated in a lesson of just how insignificant
gender is, whether fluid, solid or gaseous, in comparison to the much more
significant truth of humanity.

Indulging in further ignorance that finds a difference
between supporting mass murder in the middle east while opening arms to its
victims, and closing those arms with as little thought as to why people might
find it maddening to have their nations destroyed by Americans kept obsessed with
alleged evils outside while their inside festers and decays can only make the
decomposition faster and more deadly. This process is creating a political
stench powerful enough to make much of the world and a significant part of the
American electorate desperately gasp for breath.

The crackpot realism of lesser evilism that consciousness
control substitutes for democracy in the USA is about to offer a choice for the
400 billionaires whose combined wealth exceeds that of more than 190 million
Americans. Will they continue to have an employee leader at the White House who
uses a Men’s Room while on the road, or will it be, historically we are told, a
user of the Ladies Room? If we cannot confront the sordid and hypocritical
nature of a political economic system that makes it more profitable to practice
war and sell pet food than to practice peace and build housing, we will support
continued murder and mayhem that threatens us all, so long as it is performed
by members of the politically correct identity group.

Bradley Manning took conscious heroic action and as Chelsea is
still paying the price in hopes that we would face the fact that the
un-hyphenated human beings murdered, whether in Orlando, Beirut, Yemen,
Palestine, New York or any of the countless other places where they have fallen,
would not continue to die if we’d put a stop to the dreadful state of terror we
have created. We owe it to all their memories, and all our future. Rest in
Peace, Orlando victims, and Wake Up, America.

Thursday, June 9, 2016

"We thought surely that he would endorse Donald Trump" said Alister McAsswipe, chair of the National Commission on Toiletry. " No seasoned observer of political life, expert intellectual or celebrity name dropper could have anticipated he would take such bold, brave and controversial position."

"It's in keeping with his completely unpredictable positions since taking power. Like, who could have imagined he'd continue billion dollar support for Israel and total disregard for the Palestinian people? Or bending over for private insurers in creation of the private health insurance protection racket, or Obamacare? The man has been everything his followers believed he would be; a total enemy of the establishment and furious fighter for the rights of the common people. Um, I think."

The spokesperson, wearing a propeller beanie and having forgotten to wash his-her-its hands after leaving a trans-species comfort station for pets ( no homeless humans allowed!) asked to remain anonymous, claiming relatives in Syria who might be threatened by Assad, or Putin, or somebody foreign.

Monday, June 6, 2016

Failing institutions,
nations or empires are often run by people whose capacities reflect the
deteriorating material conditions. The greater the crisis, the more likely that
morally crippled, mentally challenged or psychologically disturbed leadership may
assert command. But when disastrous conditions are systemic and transcend
borders, the weapons handled by the incompetents are the most lethal in
recorded history and the area blanketed in propaganda and ignorance extends
from municipality to province to nation, far more than a local population is
under assault.

As the international political
economic crisis becomes more serious the reaction from capital takes on a more
desperate nature. Growing evidence of environmental disaster under the popular marketing
title of “climate change” combines with national struggles against the amassing
of incredible minority profits while the burden of losses spreads to a greater majority
than ever and leads to more vicious suppression and more angry reactions. As
each new social rupture and ecological threat makes the situation more dangerous,
at the same time previously silent masses are aroused into serious democratic
activity that makes it more hopeful.

All over the world people
are showing their disgust with establishment political rule and even if
seemingly moving in all political directions at once, so much popular movement
is itself a positive sign for humanity.

Many of those once doing
reasonably well in the developed world, dubbed a middle class even in supposedly
class free societies, are slipping into greater hardship and with good reason
fear the future. The majority of humanity absorbing loss so that a relatively
tiny minority can profit has grown in numbers and at the same time has access
to communications tools that threaten minority power as never before. This
positive change among budding democratic majorities is unfortunately more than
balanced by that minority ruling class and its loyal employees still in control
of enough wealth and weaponry to destroy everything and everyone if their regime
continues.

Capital’s counter-attack
has been perhaps more bloody than ever in places like the middle east where
nations have been destroyed, hundreds of thousands murdered and refugees
scattered as never before, and more political where it is not powerful enough
to use military brute force and relies on money with which to buy governments, media
and rely on mental rather than physical control.

An attempted military coupe
in Venezuela when the charismatic Chavez was alive was quickly over turned by
popular power. But now, even with a much less popular leader, capital can only
work through its economic channels to make the economy “scream” - the policy of
the USA that destroyed Chile’s attempt at liberation from imperial rule in the
1970s - rather than attempt a military takeover. Nevertheless, it is blatantly
activating major steps within its rule of law – guaranteed to maintain minority
control – to bring down a democratically elected government desperately trying
to represent the previously disregarded. The same is true for Brazil, where an
elected leader is threatened with impeachment by the minority power of
financial wealth, both Brazilian and international, but with no military steps
as yet taken.

After economic bludgeoning
of these and other nations which attempt to govern on behalf of majorities
instead of minorities, masses of people are manipulated into blaming the
elected forces attempting to perform on their behalf despite national and
global impediments, thereby hopefully softening them into acceptance of
anti-democratic but not blatant military takeover as in the past. That
situation can change in a moment as desperation grows and the mental crisis
center atmosphere drives the homicidals among the ruling group to take more
drastic action.

This is part of the growing
weakness on the part of capital that makes it more susceptible to democratic
movements for change and at the same time more threatening to take irrational
actions that could be much worse than anything in the past. Those actions can
be more viciously economic, as in Greece and now attempted in France, quietly
but just as savagely carving up Africa into post colonial market enclaves
assuring more poverty and suffering among that continents majority, or
carefully and nervously watching events unfold at the diminished and weakening
but still center of global capital in the USA.

There, contradictions can
be seen in a presidential campaign in some ways as long and boring as usual,
but in others more exciting a harbinger of change than at any time in recent
history. Two populist candidates from what passes for a left and right are
representative of the disgust with regular party politics, fear of what is
happening to ordinary people and the economy, and real desire to remake and
reshape the nation. Whether that desire ultimately brings America closer to
achieving peace, social justice and environmental balance remains to be seen
since that can only come through radical political economic change. While that
is hardly being offered even by the left populist, its desire seems to be
growing in popular consciousness as movements include not only old political
activist groups but now newer and larger ones including some who have never had
political experience before.

While major media and much
of what passes for alternative voices continue the skepticism that helps make
such change impossible, an uncommon out pouring of citizens seem to be making
it inevitable, even if lacking a united majority at this moment. Rest assured,
whatever and whomever the candidates of the major party may be, the social
ferment will continue and demands for radical change will grow because they
have to in order to assure a future for not only the majority, but really
humanity.

The increased pressures on imperial
control are leading to dangerous situations regarding newer capitalist states
like China and especially Russia, where U.S. government and media portray a menace
seemingly beyond the past fiction of communism. Hardly a day passes without the
main establishment voices carrying items about Russian treachery, Putin’s
maniacal lust for power, China’s arrogance and other fictional tales accepted
by citizens with nowhere else to find news or analysis given that much of what
passes for alternative media adopts the same party line.

Some previously sober
sounding observers of the international scene invoke near panic over potential
nuclear war and even if they over react, the situation warrants reasoned
intervention by a democratic force before the irrationals destroy far more than
their own personal fortunes. Fears of a future environmental breakdown to be
experienced by our children and grandchildren miss the potential for political
breakdown of a far more deadly and serious nature. This can come about much
sooner than later if we allow control to remain in the hands of minority
billionaires ruling over a private profit motivated scheme that worships market
forces as a perverse deity threatening all of humanity. There needs to be a crisis
intervention exercised by global forces of democracy that represent the
interest of the overwhelming majority now paying the deadly price for a small
group to live in obscene but temporary luxury that can bring about permanent, disastrous
and final poverty for all of us if it isn’t stopped.

Thursday, June 2, 2016

They were joined in making those charges by former workers from Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, Princeton,Yeshiva, Columbia, UCLA, Texas A&M, LSU, Brigham Young and 257 other colleges and universities.